1. Never give me work in the morning. Always wait until 4pm and then bring it in to me. The challenge of a deadline is refreshing.

2. If it’s a rush job, run in and interrupt me every 10 minutes to inquire how I am doing. That helps. Or even better, hover behind me, advising my every keystroke.

3. Always leave without telling anyone where you are going. It gives me a chance to be creative when someone asks where you are.

4. If my arms are full of papers, boxes, books or supplies, don’t open the door for me. I need to learn how to function as a paraplegic and opening doors with no arms is good training.

5. If you give me more than one job to do, don’t tell me which is the priority. I am psychic.

6. Do your best to keep me late. I adore this office and really have nowhere to go or anything to do. I have no life beyond work.

7. If a job I do pleases you, keep it a secret. If that gets out, it could mean a promotion.

8. If you don’t like my work, tell everyone. I like my name to be popular in conversations.

9. I was born to be whipped.

10. If you have special instructions for a job, don’t write them down. In fact, save them until the job is almost done. No use confusing me with useful information.

11. Never introduce me to people you are with. I have no right to know anything. In the corporate food chain, I am plankton. When you refer to them later, my shrewd deductions will identify them.

12 Be nice to me only when the job I am doing for you could really change your life and send you straight to manager’s hell.

13. Tell me all your little problems. No one else has any, and its nice to know someone is less fortunate. I especially like the story about having to pay so much taxes on the bonus cheque you received for being such a good manager.

14. Wait until my yearly review and THEN tell me what my goal SHOULD have been. Give me a mediocre performance rating with a cost of living increase. I’m not here for the money anyway.

September 8, 2008

It seems that during the past few years more and more people have been forced to work two jobs. No doubt if they are married chances are good that both spouses are working full time. Now with cell phones bosses, rather than having an eight hour day it seems that more people are being forced to be available by phone during what used to be their own private time.

Is it just me or are we all working too much, too long and don’t have enough time to play?

“Hypothetical: “ Suppose you are a taxi driver. One morning you go to work and have coffee with a co-worker. She tells you how she made over $200.00 helping a person she was sure was a drug dealer by driving him around town in her taxi to do what she believed were drug deals.

This co-worker considers herself a responsible, good citizen who is doing nothing wrong in this particular case. She considers this a gray area. She is turning a blind eye toward what this passenger might be doing because she profits by being his driver.

Do you have situations in your life with gray areas and where do you draw the line?

You go, you flush: out of sight, out of mind. Not for city maintenance crews. With 850 billion gallons of sewer and storm water leaking into watersheds around the country every year, the Environmental Protection Agency is cracking down on cracked pipes. And the SuperVision 250 is riding that great, stinky wave of demand.

Are you afraid you could lose your job to technological advances or have you lost a job because of a technological advance?